Night Out
Here’s to monomania, and a piebald moon.
—Dave Smith, “You’re In My Blood”Someone has taken a bite out of the moon
and there are spots of blood all over the place.
If something like that happened to me,
I would imagine the odor of molten metal.
I may possibly have spilled my strawberry margarita,
so that one doesn’t count. Order me another.Let’s try this again: the leprous moon is deformed,
wearing a glittering halo like the sugar that crusts
the rim of my glass. The clouds are pale dreadlocks.
The dropping temperature, visible in blue, reflects
in bright chrome under the elemental glares of neon,
sodium, and mercury. Tonight it will snow.The cold makes me sad. Indoors, the bottles
and glasses glitter too, dissipating their trickling heat.
Parallel vistas converge beyond the coathooks.
No matter how many times the mirrors
multiply the last late diners, they are all lonely,
but all of them have somewhere to go, to sleep.It is easier to look down at the table than up.
The soaked cake darkens and bleeds sweetness
as the ice cubes melt. Nothing else is left.
That means we ought to go to the beach,
in another latitude, another time zone,
waters warm as blood, a perfect circle rising..
©2001 F.J. Bergmann
"Night Out" appeared on Words-myth Issue #5 January 2007